Serving the Community College of Vermont & Vermont State University
Serving the Community College of Vermont & Vermont State University
“Freedom is never granted; it is won.”
– A. Philip Randolph (organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful African-American-led labor union)
February is Black History Month. The theme for 2025 is African Americans and Labor, focusing on the "various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people."
See below for select VSCS Libraries materials focusing on the story of African American labor, as well as some additional titles exploring Black history in the state of Vermont.
A selection of books highlighting the labor history of African Americans. All electronic titles are available to read online and our physical titles may be requested for pick-up at a VSCS library or sent to your home.
In the 1930s, fewer than one in one hundred U.S. labor union members were African American. By 1980, the figure was more than one in five. Black and Blue explores the politics and history that led to this dramatic integration of organized labor. In the process, the book tells a broader story about how the Democratic Party unintentionally sowed the seeds of labor's decline.
Exploring how artists at midcentury addressed the social issues of their day--from Jacob Lawrence to Elizabeth Catlett, Rose Piper to Charles White. This timely book surveys the varied ways in which Black American artists responded to the political, social, and economic climate of the United States of that time.
The African-American actors and actresses whose names have shone brightly on Broadway marquees earned their place in history not only through hard work, perseverance, and talent, but also because of the legacy left by those who came before them. Like the doors of many professions, those of the theater world were shut to minorities for decades. While the Civil War may have freed the slaves, it was not until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s that the playing field began to level.
For many African Americans, getting a public sector job has historically been one of the few paths to the financial stability of the middle class, and in New York City, few such jobs were as sought-after as positions in the fire department (FDNY). For over a century, generations of Black New Yorkers have fought to gain access to and equal opportunity within the FDNY. Tracing this struggle for jobs and justice from 1898 to the present, David Goldberg details the ways each generation of firefighters confronted overt and institutionalized racism.
The history of African-descended peoples in Alaska runs deep and spans generations. Decades before statehood and earlier even than the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s, Black men and women participated in Alaska's politics and culture. They hunted for whales, patrolled the seas, built roads, served in the military, opened businesses, fought injustices, won political office, and developed community. Black Lives in America's Far Northwest presents their stories and chronicles how Alaska's Black population, though small, has had an outsized impact on the culture and civic life of the region. Centering the agency and diversity of Black Alaskans in a unique political and economic environment, this project documents the history of Black achievement, struggles, and everyday life in Alaska from 1867 to the early 21st century
Black Power at Work chronicles the history of direct action campaigns to open up the construction industry to black workers in the 1960s and 1970s.
The labor of black workers has been crucial to economic development in the United States. Yet because of racism and segregation, their contribution remains largely unknown. Spanning the 1930s to the present, Black Workers Remember tells the hidden history of African American workers in their own words.
Originating in the African-American communities of the Deep South in the late nineteenth century, the blues gave birth to jazz, R&B, rock, punk, and country. From the impassioned slide guitar of the Mississippi Delta, to the electric sounds of Chicago's street corners, to the improvised jams of blues-rock, The Blues explores the many forms this quintessentially American music has taken.
From the time the first tracks were laid in the early nineteenth century, the railroad has occupied a crucial place in America's historical imagination. Now, for the first time, Eric Arnesen gives us an untold piece of that vital American institution--the story of African Americans on the railroad.
In 1868, the state of Georgia began to make its rapidly growing population of prisoners available for hire. The resulting convict leasing system ensnared not only men but also African American women, who were forced to labor in camps and factories to make profits for private investors.
This unprecedented history of Black cinema examines 100 years of Black movies--from Gone with the Wind to Blaxploitation films to Black Panther--using the struggles and triumphs of the artists, and the films themselves, as a prism to explore Black culture, civil rights, and racism in America.
Farming While Black is the first comprehensive "how to" guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture.
As the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a tireless advocate for civil rights, A. Philip Randolph (1889--1979) served as a bridge between African Americans and the labor movement. During a public career that spanned more than five decades, he was a leading voice in the struggle for black freedom and social justice, and his powerful words inspired others to join him. This volume documents Randolph's life and work through his own writings.
A chorus of extraordinary voices tells one of history's great epics: The four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619-- a year before the Mayflower dropped anchor off Cape Cod, when the White Lion disgorged "some 20 and odd Negroes" onto the shores of Virginia-- to the present, when African Americans, descendants of those on the White Lion and a thousand other routes to this country, continue a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles, stunning achievements, and millions of ordinary lives passing through extraordinary history.
In May 1967, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural and economic development project, FFC would grow to over 600 acres, offering a means for local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers to pursue community wellness, self-reliance, and political resistance. Life on the cooperative farm presented an alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African Americans--an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land, and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative and collective effort.
A fresh portrayal of one of the architects of the African American intellectual tradition, whose faith in the subversive power of education will inspire teachers and learners today.
Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. And yet the stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored.
Hammer and Hoe tells the story of how, during the 1930s and 40s, Communists took on Alabama's repressive, racist police state to fight for economic justice, civil and political rights, and racial equality. The Alabama Communist Party was made up of working people without a Euro-American radical political tradition: devoutly religious and semiliterate black laborers and sharecroppers, and a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, housewives, youth, and renegade liberals.
Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and the space race, [this book] follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA's greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances, and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country's future.
The story of a union organizer who found a second career in community organizing and helped a Jim Crow city become a better place. Ernest Thompson dedicated his life to organizing the powerless. This lively, illustrated personal narrative of his work shows the great contribution that people's coalitions can make to the struggle for equality and freedom.
Macbeth in Harlem is a testament to Black artistry thriving in the face of adversity. It chronicles how even as the endemic racism in American society and its theatrical establishment forced Black performers to abase themselves for white audiences’ amusement, African Americans overcame those obstacles to enrich the nation’s theater in countless ways.
Maida Springer was an active participant in shaping a history that involved powerful movements for social, political and economic equality and justice for workers women, and African Americans. Maida Springer is the first full-length biography to document and analyze the central role played by Springer in international affairs, particularly in the formation of AFL-CIO's African policy during the Cold War and African independence movements.
An illustrated highlight reel of more than 100 women in rap who have helped shape the genre and eschewed gender norms in the process.
Blacks and Whites. Men and Women. Historically, each group has held very different types of jobs. The divide between these jobs was stark—clean or dirty, steady or inconsistent, skilled or unskilled. In such a rigidly segregated occupational landscape, race and gender radically limited labor opportunities, relegating Black women to the least desirable jobs. Opportunity Denied is the first comprehensive look at changes in race, gender, and women's work across time, comparing the labor force experiences of Black women to White women, Black men and White men.
Hollywood is often thought of--and certainly by Hollywood itself--as a progressive haven. However, in the decade after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the film industry grew deeply conservative when it came to conflicts over racial justice. Amid black self-assertion and white backlash, many of the most heated struggles in film were fought over employment. In A Piece of the Action, Eithne Quinn reveals how Hollywood catalyzed wider racial politics, through representation on screen as well as in battles over jobs and resources behind the scenes.
Between World War I and World War II, African Americans' quest for civil rights took on a more aggressive character as a new group of black activists challenged the politics of civility traditionally embraced by old-guard leaders in favor of a more forceful protest strategy. Beth Tompkins Bates traces the rise of this new protest politics--which was grounded in making demands and backing them up with collective action--by focusing on the struggle of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) to form a union in Chicago, headquarters of the Pullman Company.
Farah Jasmine Griffin has taken to her heart the phrase "read until you understand," a line her father, who died when she was nine, wrote in a note to her. She has made it central to this book about love of the majestic power of words and love of the magnificence of Black life.
The United States is dogged by racism and racial disparities in income, wealth, health, education, and criminal justice. Philosophers disagree on what kind of politics is needed to address this problem. Do we pursue race-specific remedies to undo racism or do we assume the permanence of racism and opt for non-race-specific remedies in pursuit of a more egalitarian society? Paradoxically, the way to make racial progress in racist America is to downplay race.In A Realistic Blacktopia, political philosopher Derrick Darby challenges the "small tent" approach by examining U.S. Supreme Court cases on education and voting rights arguing that they hold general lessons about the limits of racial politics. Securing racial justice in racist America calls for "big tent" remedies, and Darby argues that pursuing non-race-specific remedies with maximal democratic inclusion is a necessary strategy for mitigating racial inequality and achieving racial justice.
At one time, Asa Philip Randolph (1889-1979) was a household name. As president of the all-black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), he was an embodiment of America's multifaceted radical tradition, a leading spokesman for Black America, and a potent symbol of trade unionism and civil rights agitation for nearly half a century. But with the dissolution of the BSCP in the 1970s, the assaults waged against organized labor in the 1980s, and the overall silencing of labor history in U.S. popular discourse, he has been largely forgotten among large segments of the general public before whom he once loomed so large.
Dedicated to organizing workers from diverse racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, many of whom were considered "unorganizable" by other unions, the progressive New York City-based labor union District 65 counted among its 30,000 members retail clerks, office workers, warehouse workers, and wholesale workers.
The Root and the Branch examines the relationship between the early labor movement and the crusade to abolish slavery between the early national period and the Civil War. Tracing the parallel rise of antislavery movements with working-class demands for economic equality, access to the soil, and the right to the fruits of labor, Sean Griffin shows how labor reformers and radicals contributed to the antislavery project, from the development of free labor ideology to the Republican Party's adoption of working-class land reform in the Homestead Act. By pioneering an antislavery politics based on an appeal to the self-interest of ordinary voters and promoting a radical vision of "free soil" and "free labor" that challenged liberal understandings of property rights and freedom of contract, labor reformers helped to birth a mass politics of antislavery that hastened the conflict with the Slave Power, while pointing the way toward future struggles over the meaning of free labor in the post-Emancipation United States.
Long-haul trucking is linked to almost every industry in America, yet somehow the working-class drivers behind big rigs remain largely hidden from public view. Gritty, inspiring, and often devastating oral histories of gay, transsexual, and minority truck drivers allow award-winning author Anne Balay to shed new light on the harsh realities of truckers' lives behind the wheel. A licensed commercial truck driver herself, Balay discovers that, for people routinely subjected to prejudice, hatred, and violence in their hometowns and in the job market, trucking can provide an opportunity for safety, welcome isolation, and a chance to be themselves -- even as the low-wage work is fraught with tightening regulations, constant surveillance, danger, and exploitation. The narratives of minority and queer truckers underscore the working-class struggle to earn a living while preserving one's safety, dignity, and selfhood. Through the voices of drivers from marginalized communities who spend eleven- to fourteen-hour days hauling America's commodities in treacherous weather and across mountain passes, Semi Queer reveals the stark differences between the trucking industry's crushing labor practices and the perseverance of its most at-risk workers.
Although black women's labor was essential to the development of the United States, studies of these workers have lagged far behind those of working black men and white women. Adding insult to injury, a stream of images in film, television, magazines, and music continues to portray the work of black women in a negative light. Sister Circle offers an innovative approach to representing work in the lives of black women. Contributors from many fields explore an array of lives and activities, allowing us to see for the first time the importance of black women's labor in the aftermath of slavery.
Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Usher is a black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical: a piece about a black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical. Michael R. Jackson's blistering, momentous new musical follows a young artist at war with a host of demons -- not least of which, the punishing thoughts in his own head -- in an attempt to capture and understand his own strange loop.
As incredible as it may seem today, until the mid-1960s major U.S. airlines refused to hire African-American pilots. It took Marlon DeWitt Green to challenge-and ultimately change-the entrenched system of segregation in the airline industry. Green, a successful and accomplished Air Force pilot, supported by his wife and family, the efforts of his tireless Denver attorney, and a unanimous decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, finally opened the cockpits to pilots of color. But the victory did not come without immense personal pain.
An in-depth account of the Black locals within the American Federation of Musicians In the 1910s and 1920s, Black musicians organized more than fifty independent locals within the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) in an attempt to control audition criteria, set competitive wages, and secure a voice in national decision-making.
Under Jackie's Shadow is a portal to the hidden world of Minor League baseball in the era just after Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. What was it like to be Black and playing in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 1965, or Memphis, Tennessee, in 1973? What was it like to play for white coaches and scouting directors from the Jim Crow South who cut their professional teeth in the segregated game before Jackie Robinson ushered in the sport's integration? Or to be called into the clubhouse with your Black teammates one spring training morning in 1969 and told that to make the ballclub you'd have to beat out the Black men in that room, because none of you were ever going to beat out a white player, regardless? Or to spend a staggering eight seasons playing A-ball in the Midwest League, even winning a triple crown, while watching less-talented white teammates get promoted each year while you stayed behind? The thirteen players in Under Jackie's Shadow are going to tell you.
From the ongoing issues of poverty, health, housing and employment to the recent upsurge of lethal police-community relations, the black working class stands at the center of perceptions of social and racial conflict today. Journalists and public policy analysts often discuss the black poor as "consumers" rather than "producers," as "takers" rather than "givers," and as "liabilities" instead of "assets."
A selection of books highlighting Black history in Vermont. All electronic titles are available to read online and our physical titles may be requested for pick-up at a VSCS library or sent to your home.
Mention the state of Vermont and images of maple syrup, scenic mountains, and progressive politics come to mind. But in addition to skiing, farming, and fall foliage, there is also a startling history of racial and religious intolerance and bigotry. Burlington is known as the birthplace of John Dewey, whose enlightened views about education reached far beyond the Green Mountains to impact schools. Yet there exist many unsavory examples of equitable education deferred for a small but growing population. Black males, especially, have not been treated fairly - suffering in silence as a disproportional number are shunted away from opportunities such as college-prep courses and instead, into special education, the principal's office, and out the door due to suspension. This book seeks to answer the question: What is truly going on for Black males in Vermont public schools? Only those who were students in public schools across the state can really answer that question, and their perspectives help shed light on the condition of Black males in predominantly white rural spheres experiencing similar shifts in racial demographics across the nation.
The Blind African Slave recounts the life of Jeffrey Brace (né Boyrereau Brinch), who was born in West Africa around 1742. Captured by slave traders at the age of sixteen, Brace was transported to Barbados, where he experienced the shock and trauma of slave-breaking and was sold to a New England ship captain. After fighting as an enslaved sailor for two years in the Seven Years War, Brace was taken to New Haven, Connecticut, and sold into slavery. After several years in New England, Brace enlisted in the Continental Army in hopes of winning his manumission. After five years of military service, he was honorably discharged and was freed from slavery. As a free man, he chose in 1784 to move to Vermont, the first state to make slavery illegal. There, he met and married an African woman, bought a farm, and raised a family. Although literate, he was blind when he decided to publish his life story, which he narrated to a white antislavery lawyer, Benjamin Prentiss, who published it in 1810. Upon his death in 1827, Brace was a well-respected abolitionist. In this first new edition since 1810, Kari J. Winter provides a historical introduction, annotations, and original documents that verify and supplement our knowledge of Brace's life and times.
A daughter of freed African American slaves, Daisy Turner became a living repository of history. The family narrative entrusted to her--'a well-polished artifact, an heirloom that had been carefully preserved'--began among the Yoruba in West Africa and continued with her own century and more of life. In 1983, folklorist Jane Beck began a series of interviews with Turner, then one hundred years old and still relating four generations of oral history. Beck uses Turner's storytelling to build the Turner family saga, using at its foundation the oft-repeated touchstone stories at the heart of their experiences: the abduction into slavery of Turner's African ancestors; Daisy's father Alec Turner learning to read; his return as a soldier to his former plantation to kill his former overseer; and Daisy's childhood stand against racism. Other stories re-create enslavement and her father's life in Vermont--in short, the range of life events large and small, transmitted by means so alive as to include voice inflections. Beck, at the same time, weaves in historical research and offers a folklorist's perspective on oral history and the hazards--and uses--of memory.
An impressive work of historical recovery, Discovering Black Vermont tells the story of three generations of free blacks trying to build a life and community in northern Vermont in the years following statehood. By piecing together fragments of the history of free blacks in Vermont—tax and estate records, journals, diaries, and the like—the author recovers what is essentially a lost world, establishing a framework for using primary sources to document a forgotten past.
"Forward! Double-Quick!" and away we all rushed toward the fort... capturing two brass field pieces, one of which the rebels left loaded." A true account of Vermont men of color in battle during the Civil War. A barely known fact is that the tiny state of Vermont provided over one hundred and fifty African American soldiers to fight for the Union and by doing so, free millions of their own race. This is their story.
Merging comprehensive research and grand storytelling, Mr. and Mrs. Prince reveals the true story of a remarkable pre-Civil War African-American family, as well as the challenges that faced African-Americans who lived in the North versus the slaves who lived in the South. Both accomplished people, Lucy Terry was a devoted wife and mother, and the first known African-American poet. Abijah Prince, her husband, was a veteran of the French and Indian Wars and an entrepreneur. Together they pursued what would become the cornerstone of the American dream--having a family and owning property where they could live, grow, and prosper. Owning land in both Vermont and Massachusetts, they were well on their way to settling in when bigoted neighbors tried to run them off. Rather than fleeing, they asserted their rights, as they would do many times, in court.
In the earliest days of America's founding, Vermont stands out: a consitution that banned slavery outright and allowed those without land the right to vote, created a fertile ground for those cast aside in neighboring states--women, native american and african american people--to thrive and to to lead.
A selection of films highlighting the labor history of African Americans from the library streaming video databases: Kanopy and Films on Demand (plus one DVD featuring recordings of a 102-year-old Vermonter of color.)
If you haven't accessed Kanopy before, learn how to set up your account in this FAQ.
2021 - 2 43 min. episodes
This two-part special begins with first years of the European slave trade but fundamentally focuses on the individuals who fought & struggled against colonialism, slavery, and their legacies. Insisting on the importance of individuals and their ability to resist historical conditions – to shoulder burdens and to break down walls – it covers five centuries of intertwining British and American histories. Divided in two parts, the first investigates the different struggles in the gradual labour of breaking down the system of slavery. It looks to the violent resistance that occurred within the Atlantic system, inspiring defiance, and fracturing the machine piecemeal, but also to the literary and political organising in the abolitionary process. The second part deals with very different sorts of struggles: the legacies of slavery and colonialism and how they have been patterned out and resisted up to the present day. It turns again to literary composers, political organisers and to especially resonant symbolic moments, reminding us of the importance of remembering those who have pioneered, resisted, spoken out and paved the way.
1996 - 1 hr. 27 min.
Ask most people who led the 1963 March on Washington and they'll probably tell you Martin Luther King, Jr. But the real force behind the event was the man many call the pre-eminent black labor leader of the century and the father of the modern civil rights movement: A. Philip Randolph.
2013 - 1 hr. 16 min.
Against a backdrop of sex, politics, and race, Anita reveals the intimate story of a woman who spoke truth to power. An entire country watched as a poised, beautiful African-American woman sat before a Senate committee of 14 white men and with a clear, unwavering voice recounted the repeated acts of sexual harassment she had endured while working with U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Anita Hill's graphic testimony was a turning point for gender equality in the U.S. and ignited a political firestorm about sexual harassment and power in the workplace that resonates still today.
2023 - 1 hr. 24 min.
Evanston, Illinois Alderwoman Robin Rue Simmons leads the passage of the first tax-funded reparations bill in U.S. history for Black Americans. What follows is conflict as she and her community struggle with the burden to make repair and restitution for Black Americans harmed by centuries of slavery, systemic injustice, and exploitation while racial and social crisis engulfs the country.
2021 - 1 hr. 25 min.
At the heart of this feature documentary is the groundbreaking “Two Centuries of Black American Art” exhibition curated by the late African American artist and scholar David Driskell in 1976. Held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, this pioneering exhibit featured more than 200 works of art by 63 artists and cemented the essential contributions of Black artists in America in the 19th and 20th centuries. The exhibit would eventually travel to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Brooklyn Museum. The film shines a light on the exhibition’s extraordinary impact on generations of African American artists who have staked a claim on their rightful place within the 21st-century art world.
1984 - 1 hr. 15 min.
This 1984 feature documentary explores the role of black actors, black directors, and the black audience in American movies. Lorenzo Tucker, known as the Black Valentino, discusses his career with Oscar Micheaux. Joel Fluellen and Vincent Tubbs tell memorable stories of what life was like for the few blacks working in Hollywood in the 50s and 60s including Dorothy Dandridge. Also included are interviews with Diahnne Abbott, Rosalind Cash, and Alfre Woodard, who talk about negative stereotyping. Jim Brown, Vonetta McGee, and D'Urville Martin come up with alternative solutions to the one-way street that was "blaxploitation" and discuss new ways of advancing an independent black cinema. Included is a marvelous speech by Sidney Poitier on accepting the Black Hall of Fame "Oscar.” Grandmaster Flash and his "Message" is the theme tune and the writer Oscar Williams holds the whole show together with his advice to the creative outsider.
“Little Black cowboys need their heroes too,” sings Black country-western singer Jae R. Mason, as part of a movement to recapture the Black presence in the Old West. This program from Tony Brown's Journal highlights the rich history of Black contributions to the settling of America’s western frontier, exposing this legacy through song, rare photos, and film.
2021 - 1 hr. 29 min.
For decades, trailblazing photographer Gordon Parks brought the human struggle of the Black community out of the shadows and onto the pages of LIFE magazine. This documentary explores Parks' enduring legacy through the lens of three contemporary photographers, and spotlights his visionary work and its impact on the next generation of artists.
2024 - 2 23 min, episodes
The Color of Space captures the personal stories of seven current and former Black astronauts, each selected to become part of NASA’s astronaut corps and train for space missions.
2024 - 55 min.
This documentary explores the complex issue of reparations in the United States using a thoughtful approach to history, historical injustices, systemic inequities, and the critical dialogue on racial conciliation. Through personal narratives, community inquiries, and scholarly insights, it aims to inspire understanding of the scope and rationale of the reparations debate.
2021 - 4 1 hr. episodes
Exterminate All the Brutes is an eye-opening journey through time, offering an incisive look at the history of European colonialism in Africa and the Americas. The groundbreaking series explores the lasting impact of exploitation and genocide on society today, pushing the boundaries of traditional documentary filmmaking by weaving director Raoul Peck’s (I Am Not Your Negro) personal voyage into the darkest hours of humanity with scripted scenes starring Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor). Across four episodes, Peck deconstructs the making and masking of history, digs deep into the ideology of white supremacy, and challenges audiences to rethink the very notion of how history is written.
2021 - 43 min.
Looks at the impact key movements throughout U.S. history have had in shaping our society, laws and culture. From the labor movement of the 1880s, women's suffrage and civil rights, to the LGBTQ+ and Black Lives Matter movements, protest is in the American DNA and this documentary gives an unfiltered look at the ways it has evolved the world in which we live.
2024 - 57 min.
Starting with the accidental discovery of the significant history of a modest dwelling on a traditionally African-American street in Hagerstown, Maryland, this documentary traces the roots of middle America’s racial, economic and social interactions. Through the lens of this house, the rise and fall of the African-American community in small rust belt towns and cities across America is told. The film also explores how the house's discovery, renovation and renewal could also signal a change in the fortunes of the street and the larger community.
2010 - 5 46 min. episodes, 2 hr. 11 min. additional supplemental footage.
If prevalent and accepted accounts of American history—both scholarly and those portrayed by Hollywood—are to be believed, the face of the U.S. armed services has always been white. For Love of Liberty: The Story of America’s Black Patriots finally, and for the first time, sets the record straight with an all-star cast who read from a collection of letters, diaries, speeches, and military records that document and acknowledge the sacrifices and accomplishments of African-Americans across four centuries of warfare. This acclaimed series has generated intense support from scholars, students, and parents and has been endorsed by all of the major African-American veterans groups and civil rights organizations as well as by prominent senators and congressional representatives. A viewable/printable episode guide is available online.
2021 - 1 hr. 34 min.
Who owns the rights to the violence of the past - the victim or the perpetrator?
2024 - 1 hr. 32 min.
From Executive Producer Al Roker, Kenyatta is part love story and part political thriller about Malcolm Kenyatta’s historic run for the US Senate. This race is about more than taking on the political competition; it’s about taking on an entire system.
2022 - 4 52 min, episodes
This four-hour series, hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., chronicles the vast social networks and organizations created by and for Black people-beyond the reach of the “White gaze.” Gates takes viewers into an extraordinary world that showcases Black people’s ability to collectively prosper, defy white supremacy and define Blackness in ways that transformed America itself.
2008 - 52 min.
Black Nationalist pioneer and First Hero of Jamaica, Marcus Garvey is discussed by contemporaries, historians, family and friends. The film traces his early successes in organizing West Indian contract labor, to the phenomenal rise of his Universal Negro Improvement Association, which took America by storm in the 20s.
2008 - 32 min.
Presents the life of a daughter of a former slave, 102-year-old Daisy Turner. She recalls childhood incidents and her father's Civil War experiences and talks about life in her homestead in Vermont. Folklorist Jane Beck fills in details about traditions preserved in the Turner family. Originally produced in 1986 by the Vermont Folklife Center.
2012 - 45 min,
Cultural historian Dave Zirin, whose influential blog and bestselling books have offered searing insights into the politics of American sports, examines the myriad ways sports culture has worked both to reproduce and challenge the wider culture's dominant ideas about race and racial difference.
2012 - 1 hr. 24 min.
Slavery by Another Name, narrated by Laurence Fishburne, is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans' most cherished assumptions: that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South after the Civil War, new systems of involuntary servitude took its place with shocking force and brutality. The film documents how for more than 80 years, thousands of African Americans, often guilty of no crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay, repeatedly bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of white masters. Tolerated by both the North and South, forced labor lasted well into the 20th century.
1990 - 56 min.
Like many industrial centers, Corbin, Kentucky—birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken—attracted African-American sharecroppers looking for better-paying jobs during World War I. But when white veterans returned from the war, economic competition heated up, and on one October night in 1919 black citizens were literally railroaded out of town. The events of that night are reconstructed in this documentary with the help of newsreel clips and interviews with eyewitnesses and scholars, while Corbin’s current residents deny the town’s “whites only” reputation and evade its haunting past. Contains harsh and inflammatory language.
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
